Service Corporation International (SCI), the largest funeral home operator in North America, has grown its “Consolidated Funeral Revenue” 20.8% from 2019 (the latest year not affected by the pandemic) through 2024.  Their annual financial report lists this number as $1.92 billion in the year 2019 and $2.32 billion in the most recent year of 2024.

That math would then equate to an annual average rate of revenue growth for those five years of 4.16%.  In my opinion, that’s a pretty good rate for, as stock-picker Peter Lynch would say, a “slow-growth nickel at a time” industry.

Neptune Society

However, when you dive a little deeper into the SCI report on “Consolidated Funeral Revenue” you will find a listing for “Non-funeral home” revenue and when the math is done on that line item you will find that it has grown 81% or has an incredible annual growth rate of 16.2% over the past five years.  In 2019 SCI reported $52.2 million of “Non-funeral home” revenue and in 2024 the company reported $94.8 million in that same category.

Here’s how SCI defines “Non-funeral home” revenue in its report, “Non-funeral home revenue represents services sold on a preneed or atneed contract through one of our non-funeral home sales channels (e.g. SCI Direct). . ”

In a 2022 Investor Day presentation, that you can access here,  SCI intimates that this channel includes Neptune Society

A National Cremation Society location

and National Cremation Society operations.  That same presentation mentions that, at that time, they operated 109 locations of this type in 31 states.

Here’s some other information that is pointed out about SCI Direct in that presentation that are features of this segment of SCI which the company says benefits from an “Expanding market”:

• (It is an) Asset Light preneed model serving the direct cremation consumer
• (It is an) Incremental Channel to capture the price sensitive consumer
• (It offers) Simple product offerings and packaged pricing
• (It has) growing volume and average

That same 2022 Investor Day presentation claimed that SCI Direct brought home $37 million in gross profit for the year 2021.  And, if you check the 2021 annual report you will find that the “Non-funeral home” revenue was listed at $74.1 million estimating that the gross profit margin of SCI Direct could be as high as 50%.

That same year, the gross profit percent for the entire Consolidated Funeral Revenue of SCI was listed at 26.7%.

Here is the website for SCI’s National Cremation Service brand

Here is the website for SCI’s Neptune Society brand

Tom Anderson
Funeral Director Daily

Funeral Director Daily take: I started researching this because last week I took part in a Continuing Education seminar with a few other funeral directors.  A couple mentioned to me that they had seen their Direct Cremation with No Services case volume rise fairly rapidly in the last year or so.

I think that these statistics from SCI bear out that situation is happening.  While revenues for SCI’s funeral service overall increased at an annual rate of 4.16%, revenue for “Non-funeral” channels increased four times that percentage.  I think that is a pretty good indication that the funeral consumer is asking for “less”. . . . . Whatever “less” may be.

I also think that there is a lot to be optimistic about with these numbers.  In extrapolating the “ballpark” figures, SCI “Non-funeral” channels did $74.1 million of business in 2021 out of 109 locations.  That’s an average revenue of $679,816 per location.  And, if it truly had a 50% gross profit margin that would leave each location with about $340,00o to pay the bills.

When I look at those numbers a couple of things come to mind:

1. Margins of that nature can support this business model
2. Location overheads need to be less than historic traditional funeral home structures — both in physical structure and employee work schedule structures to make the expense side of the equation work.
3. Direct cremation is a volume business  —  high volume operations will do very well. . . . Low volume operations will struggle to survive.

I finally surmise that if this is the “Death Care” that the consumer wants, we will see more and more consolidation of the traditional funeral home operations in a necessary move to lower overhead cost per case by increasing case volume per location.

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In the years that I’ve been publishing Funeral Director Daily I’ve witnessed those in Great Britain become concerned because approximately 20% of the country’s deaths have been memorialized with only a “Direct Cremation”.   Just so we are on the same wave length for purposes of this article’s discussion, here is how one British company defines “Direct Cremation”:

“Also known as a cremation without ceremony or a basic cremation, a direct cremation is a cremation that family and loved ones don’t attend”

That same company says this about the rise of “Direct Cremation” in the United Kingdom. . . .”Cremations are the most common type of funeral in the UK. In 2023, 53% of funerals were traditional cremations. This has dropped, however, from 74% in 2019, while direct cremations have risen from 3% in 2019 to 20% in 2023.”

“Traditional cremations” would have included some type of service and family attendance at a visitation or memorial service in addition to the cremation.

One thing that I’ve learned in my career is that the funeral home business is truly local in nature but consumers eventually follow a national trend in services selected.  If that hypothesis is true, then I think trending statistics indicate that North America’s traditional funeral homes will see a rapid increase in “Direct Cremation with No Service” choices by consumers.

I’ve been in the business for over 40 years now and as I witnessed Great Britain’s Direct Cremation percentage incease every year up to, and probably over, 20% by 2025 I thought that was a rapid growth.  However, there is some data that might lead one to believe that the North American “Direct Cremation” rates may be twice that percentage number.

I recently received the 2025 Performance Tracker X Trends and Insights Report published by Johnson Consulting Group (JCG) and powered by J3 Tech Solutions.  It is data driven by 135,100 total funeral home contracts in 2024 that represent 113,921 sales and survey data records. . . . .That’s 3.7% of the estimated 3.046 million deaths in America for 2024 and may be the most comprehensive data available except for Service Corporation International’s (SCI) closely held internal data on the 355,000 or so services that they provide annually (about 12% of US deaths).

SCI does make public the percentage of what they call their Comparable Cremation Rate which is defined by them as “the total cremation rate including all sales channels” (of their business).  I take that to say that “all sales channels” not only includes their traditional funeral homes but their cremation operations such as Neptune Society as well.  Their 2024 annual report lists that number as 64.4%. . .meaning that 64 out of every 100 dispositions they performed were cremations.

Others also provide cremation rates to the public.  For instance JCG’s At-Need cremations came in at 58% of deaths and the Cremation Association of North America’s (CANA) 2023 cremation rate was at 60.6%.

Tom Anderson
Funeral Director Daily

When you couple those numbers with information and data from the JCG Trends and Insight Report one can hypothesize the “Direct Cremation” percentage of dispositions in North America — at least with the data they have provided.  The JCG Trends and Insights Report has data on “case mix” of cremation dispositions.

That “case mix” section of that report indicates that 69.7% of all cremations in 2024 were “Direct Cremations”, 11.3% were Traditional (casketed) cremations, and 19.0% were cremations with memorial services.  The report also has a “case mix” for burial dispositions that falls this way. . . 81.4% of burials were “traditional burials”, 13.6% of burials were Graveside Service only burials, and 5.0% were “Immediate burials” — meaning no services at all.

While these are the “case mix” numbers from the JCG Trends and Insights Report, they may or may not be the close to the exact numbers of the “case mix” for North America.  It could be argued that Johnson Consulting’s reporting clients are “more or less” direct cremation oriented than others.  But using a statistical sample that is 3.7% of all deaths and includes 41 states in the data, I’m presuming that the statistical sample input data for my calculations is at least “in the ballpark”.  Using 3.7% of the death data is much more representative than any presidential poll — and those polls can be pretty accurate.

From those available numbers, we will use CANA’s percentage rate of 60.6% and the “case mix” numbers on over 113,000 sales records from the Trends and Insights Report, one can get a rough idea of the “case mix” of all dispositions in North America.  Using the numbers from both CANA and the Trends Report here’s how the “ballpark” math on those disposition choices works out for every 100 deaths :

• 42.5%  —  Direct Cremation

• 31.7%  —  Traditional Burial

• 11.6%  —  Cremation with Memorial

•   6.9%  —  Traditional Cremation

•   5.3%  —  Graveside Burial Services

•   1.3%  —  Immediate Burial – No Services

Note:  *Not exactly 100% because of rounding

So, when I see those “Disposition/Memorialization” method choice numbers I am somewhat shocked that the “Direct Cremation with no services” in North America has moved to a choice of 42.5% of consumers.  Fifty years ago that choice of consumers was about 90% Traditional Burial.  There is no doubt that there has been “Change”.

And I’m guessing that change will continue.  There will be other choices that, while minimal today, will grow in practice.  They include natural organic reduction and alkaline hydrolysis.

Change always happens. . . .it brings both risk and opportunity —  There is no doubt that these numbers show change is happening.  It leads me to another portion of the JCG Trends and Insights Report that I found very interesting.  That being the data on “How or why a particular provider was chosen”.

It is interesting to note that of those that selected the “Traditional Burial” option, 29.8% of them had used the chosen funeral home previously.  For those that selected the “Direct Cremation” option, only 19.0% of them had used the chosen funeral home previously.

In addition to that, of those that chose the “Traditional Burial” option, 0.9% chose the funeral home because of its website, 0.9% chose the funeral home because of online ratings, and 2.3% chose the funeral home because of price.

In contrast to that, of those that chose the “Direct Cremation” option, 3.9% chose the funeral home because of its website, 3.5% chose the funeral home because of online ratings, and 8.8% chose the funeral home because of price.

Those numbers tell me that the consumers for these differing Death Care services are different consumers.  My first thought on the subject is that “Traditional Burial” consumers are satisfied customers willing to go the same route for the next death.  And, that the “Direct Cremation” consumers are customers who are “searching” for the proper fit for their needs, including almost 10% of them who are looking at price.

It leads me to believe that those traditional funeral facilities that are content with serving the previously served are at risk of losing case numbers if they are not willing to change a portion of their marketing to reach out to the consumers “searching” for that proper fit for their changing needs.

And to those start up firms who may specialize in “Direct Cremation” with no services, it appears that you can benefit by reaching out to this new consumer who is changing the landscape of Death Care.

In any case. . . .I see change happening — and happening faster than I realized.

For your own free copy of the Johnson Consulting Group Trends and Insight Report click here.

Related Article — “Why are direct cremations so popular?”  Golden Charter Funeral Plans  (2024 article) Great Britain

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